Free Master of the Opera, Act 4: Dark Interlude by Jeffe Kennedy Page A

away and he pulled down the kneeler so they could pray yet again.
    Not knowing how else to ask for it, she wished to be cleansed of the taint. She eyed the wooden closets along one wall that Roman had said were the confessionals, longing to climb inside one, close the door, and spill out all the secrets she’d been keeping.
    It didn’t escape her that the only person she hid nothing from was the very being who sat at the center of her web of lies.
    Everyone folded up the kneelers, then stood. She followed along, but Roman put a hand on her shoulder. “Just sit and wait,” he murmured. “This is communion and you can’t take it—you haven’t received absolution.”
    “What?” She said it a little too loudly, and several heads swiveled in her direction with expressions of shock and disapproval.
    Roman smoothed a hand down her back. “Just formalities. Don’t worry.”
    She sat and he joined the line of people going up to kneel in front of the priest—God, would she ever rip from her mind the image of her kneeling, bare-breasted and aroused for her masked lover?—and receiving the wafer and a sip from the golden goblet. The altar boy had rung a bell when the priest held them up, declaring them the body and blood of Christ. The miracle of transubstantiation, Roman had murmured, the mundane transformed into the holy in an instant.
    For a brief and terrified moment, when Roman said she hadn’t received absolution, she thought he knew, that he’d looked into her shadowed heart and seen where she’d been and what she’d done. Silly, because he’d explained it beforehand: Only Catholics in good standing could take communion.
    Fortunately, after that the service wound up quickly. The priest stood outside the open doors, resplendent in his robes, as if he’d stepped out of one of the paintings in the basilica. Roman introduced her as his girlfriend and asked if the priest would be coming for dinner later. They beamed at each other, full of holiness and happy grace, anticipating Reina Sanclaro’s excellent recipes, and the priest enfolded her hands in his dove-soft ones and blessed her. She felt dirty and wretched and wrong.
    This had been a bad idea.
    Hally had tried to talk her out of it the day before, in between moving Christy’s things from storage into the apartment, which smelled of soot and the astringent flavor of recently disappeared mice.
    “You’ve had a shock, finding a body.”
    “Not a body, Hally. You only say that when the person is dead.”
    “Did she sit up and say, ‘Oh, hi, Christy’?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    “Just trying to cheer you up. Why are you going to the Sanclaro shindig?”
    “They’re family friends, and—”
    “Read: your father’s friends. Does he even care? Besides, you said you were dumping Roman’s ass and now you’ve signed up to be trotted out for Sunday Mass and dinner?” Hally shook her head. “And you haven’t even gotten laid yet. This is all wrong, I tell you.”
    Riding in Roman’s sexy car, with his favorite techno tunes blasting, she felt the wrongness.
    “Maybe I should skip the family dinner this week,” she tendered. “I have so much unpacking to do, and—”
    Roman stopped her with a hand on her thigh. “Don’t be nervous. And today is a special day, my parents’ thirty-fifth anniversary party—I really want you there. They do, too.”
    “I know, but—”
    He squeezed. “I don’t want to hear any more about it. You’ll have fun when you get there. You’ll see. I have a special surprise for you.”
    They drove on a winding road through a long canyon and turned in to a drive guarded by an ancient stone wall and wrought-iron gates. The Sanclaro emblem, a cross speared by diagonal swords and encompassed by a circle, was split in two by the opening of the gates. They moved smoothly, powered by invisible electronics, a perfect melding of the old and the new.
    Huge trees bordered the drive, adding their stately shade to the sense of